Rochester Parkour – Strength Through Movement

Parkour is a training discipline that enhances your strength, agility, balance, and coordination by creating jumping, climbing, and acrobatic challenges using the environment around you. You never have to lift a weight or follow any ‘routines’. Movement is a part of being human and no one can teach you to move better than we can! Prepare to have fun!

Fun – A perfect fitness outlet for the whole family!

Safe– While what we do looks crazy, our rate of injury is less than a quarter that of Football or other organized sports.

Effective– Our instructors are the best educated coaches in the area, the state, and the East Coast. No other gym comes close!

Why is this important?

You probably already know about gymnastics or martial arts. You also are aware that fitness gyms exist and, regardless of whether or not you frequent one, know of its value in a healthy lifestyle. So given all that, why does our gym exist when there are already so many other gyms in our environment?

What if we told you that movement is an intimate and integral part of everyone’s daily lives? It doesn’t matter how big or how small, how intense, or how strenuous those movements are. Every day, you get up out of bed, you locomote using two legs, you manipulate using your arms, and move through the various spaces of your life. These movements have meaning!

This is directly contrasted by the bizarre atmosphere found within your typical fitness gym. In these places you find robust, complex machinery which gym goers willingly apply themselves to (the movements of which seem more like that found within a pre-union labor factory) and they PAY MONEY to use them! And yet, this is a phenomenon that has established itself as a normal part of our modern, everyday lives!

The fact is, human movement is so much more than just push ups, squats, and sit ups. These exercises have seeped their way into our psyche because they are simplistic, repeatable movements that are easily taught to people that, when done repetitively, may cause useful (read: aesthetic) adaptations to the human figure. They exist because they’re easy to do and a coach, trainer, or fitness televangelist can tell you to do them because they’ll make you look better. But the fact remains: good movement isn’t easy right away. It takes practice and work – ask any dancer or athlete.

The sad fact is that movement is no longer a driving force for the fitness industry – aesthetics are. Aesthetics are what sell fitness programs, workout dvds, and gym memberships. You show a scantily clad, “fit” human to a “non-fit” human and what is generated is one of the most powerful motivating forces known to man: guilt. Guilt that that “non-fit” human doesn’t look like a “fit” one. Guilt that that “non-fit” human doesn’t have a gym membership; Guilt that that “non-fit” human HAS a gym membership, but doesn’t use it!

What if we told you that the entirety of the mainstream fitness industry is promoting a message of negativity, while masquerading itself as a positive one?

The point of all of this is that healthy lifestyles are a product of positivity, not negativity. We aren’t going to sell you on some idea that joining our gym will give you a 6-pack, make you look ripped or shredded, or land you a modeling career. How a person looks has no place where movement is the concern. What we will sell you on instead is that after joining our gym and imbuing your life with the joy of playful movement, you’ll stop caring about how you look!

Shredded abs don’t get you up and over walls higher than your head. Jacked biceps won’t help you balance on a bar. Toned butts don’t help you vault over railings and barriers. After experiencing our curriculum, you will come to understand that there’s a difference between having functional movement and looking like you have functional movement. One’s a lie and the other is real, but the reality can never be portrayed in a way that fuels the marketers of the fitness industry. It doesn’t sell magazines to the masses.

Our gym exists as a counter to that entire ideology. We exist because we believe we’ve created something beautiful and amazing that will better the lives of the people within our community. Our atmosphere is one that lets everyone feel in control of their own arms and legs and gives them the understanding of how to use them for positive gain.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the old proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” Rochester Parkour is a place that will teach you to understand movement, rather than just move. It’s an amazing thing that when you give a human being the control of their own movement, they tend to move and play more – thus perpetuating the bed-rock of a healthy life: movement!

So please, won’t you come try a class or two and give yourself the gift of joyful movement? Let us ‘teach you to fish!’

Is this safe?

Honestly, few things are more safe than how we train and teach everyone from age 3 to ages 65+!

Take what ever you think you know about “parkour” and throw it away – it’s probably not what you think. You will not be jumping off of things recklessly or flipping off walls… Well, not in the beginning at least! The concept of recklessness does not exist in the realm of parkour training.

Instead, we teach you and your kids how to know what it’s like to have full and complete control of your body. Your spatial awareness increases. Your coordination increases. Your strength and agility, too. Our curriculum not only makes it LESS likely that you’ll trip, slip, or fall, but also makes it LESS likely that when you do, you don’t succumb to injuries that most other people do like strains, sprains, or fractures. In fact, participating in traditional sports like football, soccer, gymnastics, martial arts, and even track and field are statistically more likely to injure you than our curriculum.

Our students tell us how amazing it feels to have found this training style. They talk about how fun it is, but also how important it is – how it’s changed their lives. Let us help you change yours!

Contact Information

Email/Text Preferred!

We're a small business and we don't have someone at the front desk at all hours ready to answer phone calls. If your call goes to voicemail, it means we're probably with other clients or teaching a class.

We also use Google Voice - meaning when you call, our own number is displayed, not yours, so if you don't leave a voice mail, we won't be able to call you back!

We are much more responsive to email and text than we are to phone calls.